Broadband adiabatic inversion pulses for cross polarization in wideline solid-state NMR spectroscopy

Efficient acquisition of ultra-wideline solid-state NMR powder patterns is a continuing challenge. In particular, when the breadth of the powder pattern is much larger than the cross-polarization (CP) excitation bandwidth, transfer efficiencies suffer and experimental times are greatly increased. Presented herein is a CP pulse sequence with an excitation bandwidth that is up to ten times greater than that available from a conventional spin-locked CP pulse sequence. The pulse sequence, broadband adiabatic inversion CP (BRAIN-CP), makes use of the broad, uniformly large frequency profiles of chirped inversion pulses, to provide these same characteristics to the polarization transfer process. A detailed theoretical analysis is given, providing insight into the polarization transfer process involved in BRAIN-CP. Experiments on spin-1/2 nuclei including Sn-119, Hg-199 and Pt-195 nuclei are presented, and the large bandwidth improvements possible with BRAIN-CP are demonstrated. Furthermore, it is shown that BRAIN-CP can be combined with broadband frequency-swept versions of the Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill experiment (for instance with VVURST-CPMG, or WCPMG for brevity): the combined BRAIN-CP/WCPMG experiment then provides multiplicative signal enhancements of both CP and multiple-echo acquisition over a broad frequency region. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.